We present a model for wave attenuation in the marginal ice zone (MIZ) based on a two-dimensional multiple floating elastic plate solution in the frequency domain. The only physical parameters which enter the model are skin and form drag under the ice and floe length, mass and elastic stiffness. The model neglects all nonlinear effects as well as floe collisions or ice creep, and is therefore most applicable to floes that are large relative to thickness. The solution for a given arrangement of floes is fully coherent and the results are therefore dependent on the exact geometry. We firstly show that this dependence can be removed by averaging over a distribution of floe lengths (we choose the Rayleigh distribution). We then show that after this averaging, the attenuation coefficient is a function of floe number and independent of floe length, provided the floe lengths are sufficiently large. The model predicts an exponential decay of energy, just as is shown experimentally. This enables us to provide explicit values for the attenuation coefficient, as a function of the average floe thickness and wave period. We compare our theoretical predictions of the wave attenuation with measured data and other scattering models.